Embattled former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is not embattled former Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

Hillary Clinton has spent a long career in public service, and knows her stuff.

Yet Ravenstahl and Clinton assimilated into the same centuries-old political arrangements, and may be of the same species. That top-down, hierarchical “machine”-era politics which the one still pursues, was once pursued by the other.

This blasé politics of privilege, self-perpetualization and clientelism, together with enough arrogance and faith in spinmeisters, tends to produce stubborn questions about patronage and other official privileges.

It turns out, they’re displaying many of the same symptoms:   Continue reading →

Next City, Sky Kalfus

The Democrats’ last presidential nominating contest was held in 2008. How long ago was that?

We were only just starting to write about these strange, alarming new creatures called “blogs” — all without once referencing “Facebook,” or “Twitter”.

Obama’s “Yes We Can” video spread like wildfire through the blogs upon YouTube, much as Bill Clinton’s saxophone solo did on television sixteen years prior.

There were no hashtags, few memes, and your friends’ parents, your boss’s vendors and your former side pieces were not in your “news feed” fact-checking each other regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Today, we live in another dimension. We have evolved. Or at least we have mutated. Continue reading →